The Tougher Road
by Joel182
Summary: A short story dedicated to the futility of trying to live as two separate people - something CM Punk discovers over years of being a boyfriend to AJ Lee, and a lover to Dean Ambrose. Enjoy. WARNING: SLASH CONTENT.


**DISCLAIMER: I OWN THE PLOT OF THIS STORY. THE NAMES IN THIS STORY BELONG TO WWE AND VINCE MCMAHON. THANK YOU. **

**Enjoy :)**

* * *

I am on a space station. Inside my space station, I have stockpiled everything that I truly am and have locked them away in a steel room. Here, I breathe artificial air, and I eat artificial food. Outside this space station, at opposite ends, are two very distant planets. Both planets have different atmospheres, different life forms, and different ways of life. The only thing connecting both planets is this space station where I reside.

To live on each planet, I have to wear different suits. One planet requires a simple suit. Nothing more than a breathing tube with a helmet because the air is clean and the place is bountiful. On that planet, I am just as simple. I live on that planet according to what the people there believe, and what the person I love believes. On that planet, she believes I am a doting man. A man who will do anything to make her smile. A man who help rebuild all that was broken in her life. A man she knows will be in her future. A future we talk about endlessly and dream about for what seems like forever. On that planet, dressed in this simple suit, I easily become that man, and I love her just as she wants me to.

Then I leave that planet, and come back to this space station. I exit my suit, and I'm left to look at who I really am, without knowing how those pieces should be put together. In this, I find myself battling with who I am on her planet and who I've locked away in that steel room. And when the battle begins, I run to the other end of the space station and put on a far more complex suit, because the planet I am going to is much more extreme.

On this planet, there is no water, and no air. It's suffocating and deadly, and there's always a pressure that's applied with every step I take. It's inhospitable and is almost void of life, but it is here that he resides. The only man I will ever love. He lives on this planet and like my suit, he is far more complex. I don't know if he's broken, nor do I know if he ever needs my help. What I do know is that when I come to his planet, he greets me with intense passion. He takes me in his arms and holds onto me for dear life. We don't speak on this planet. No one speaks on this planet. It's a place where words are never necessary, because desire is the native tongue and is brought to light through actions. Here, I have sex with a man. I let him hold me, dominate me, feast upon me and do whatever he wants to until the sun comes back.

Then I leave, and return to my tiny space station. And I undress. And I feel a piece of me break away and vanish without warning. A piece I know is irreplaceable. The loss shakes my very foundations, but I look back at the door of that steel room and find comfort in the fact that in there is my place to return to. In there, lies who I used to be before I found myself in the Magnetic fields of two very different planets. I take comfort in this knowledge and re-dress in my simple suit.

On her planet, my landing is rough. I find myself breathing harder as the air has become stale. The greenery around is yellowing by the second and the water on this planet is drying up. Regardless, I walk to her, hold her in my arms and tell her how much I love her. She responds in kind and she lets me in one more time. I take what's given until there's nothing left. We talk about the future again, but this time neither of us are smiling. The future's still the same. The picture is still the same. But inside I feel a change. Night comes to this planet and I leave her sleeping on her side – cradling an empty space on our bed.

My space station welcomes me with open arms. I sit down on a small chair and feel cold sweat running down my back. My hands begin to tremble, and suddenly I'm parched with thirst. I maddeningly drink the artificial water here, but the thirst doesn't go away. Desperate, I clumsily suit up and set my sights on the planet in the distance.

Landing here is even rougher. Winds clotted with dust and silt whip at my body with no remorse. I inch forward ever so slowly in this zero visibility, until I find myself at the center of this planet. He is also there and he is looking back at me with a small smile. It's a familiar sight and I feel overwhelmed with joy. I run to him and let him remove from me the disappointment of my visit to her planet. He does so expertly and soon I am unable to become anything more than what he's grown accustomed to. On this planet, there is no her. There is simply him, and me, and our native tongue that speaks without words. I love him, but I am running out of air.

So I return to my space station. Stripped down to nakedness, I find myself thinking about both planets. I worry about hers the most. It's dying, and I don't know what I can do to save it. His has always been a harsh planet, but lately it's becoming even worse. Inside, I come to the decision to do what I can to save her planet. Be what I can to bring back to her world the life I had fell in love with. His planet will be alright without me. It's already an inhospitable place. It's already a desert in which he is used to being alone. I sleep that night in my space station, and go back to her planet the next day.

Life is nowhere to be found here. My simple suit suddenly isn't enough to sustain me here, but I don't dare to arrive here wearing a suit fitted for life on his world. I grit my teeth and search for her on this terrain I don't recognize. It takes me days, but I find her. She's standing alone outside the house we built together in out talks about the future. The house is run down, battered and almost to the point of being rubble. I don't recognize this house, but I press on until I reach her. She's holding an old picture frame in her hands. I see in the photograph the life we always wanted. The house, the yard, the children, and our hands linked in old age. She's holding our future, but the first step stands before us completely abandoned and left to die. She looks to me with tears in her eyes and tells me she feels just as forgotten as our future home. I go to hold her and tell her I love her, but she pushes me away and tells me that she is no longer happy being with me. She is no longer happy being on this planet. She tells me she's leaving this world, and our future, and she is never coming back. On the outside I ask her for a reason. I ask her why she has to go. She simply looks at me with tears streaming down her face, and tells me she can see that inside I am not daunted by her decision. Inside, she says, I would be able to live on without her because she's always felt the presence of someone else – someone far more important – in a place she once believed was hers and hers alone. It's what's inside that she has come to resent, and for that, she is leaving and never coming back.

I walk back to the edge of this planet and return to my space station. Behind me her planet vanishes and becomes a distant star place far out of my reach. Once on my space station, I am parched for thirst, but even on the tiny piece of place I call home, I have no water. I look at the steel door and search this place frantically for the key. It's nowhere to be found. I attack the door trying to break it down and go back to who and where I used to be before I came to this place. But the door doesn't budge. Eventually, I manage to pick the lock and open the door. Inside, there is nothing. Nothing but four walls, a ceiling and a floor. Nothing is what I had stored inside this room. For years, nothing is what I always believed I could go back to. I run to the other end of the space station and look outside the small window. I can see his planet. It's enshrouded in tremulous winds and dirt. I gulp down a breath of air and put on my complex suit.

Walking is near impossible. It's all I can do to keep my feet on the ground. The wind is ferocious and even angrier than when I last visited. From this spot I call out for him. My voice breaks every now and again, but I keep going despite the thirst in me. Days. Weeks. Months. I spend them all here, inside the belly of a lifelong storm, calling his name. Countless times, I wept. Just wept and screamed and begged him to return to me. I shouted how sorry I was for leaving him here all by himself. How sorry I was for letting him in when he wasn't the only one in my heart. Nothing but howling winds and the scrapings of dust responded back to me. Otherwise, this world was silent. Like it had been the day I landed. A silent, desolate place I never understood, but felt compatible enough with to keep returning to. My words won't reach him here. My feelings won't reach him here. This planet, his planet, is now a place that has shielded me away from it. Months have proven to me this truth, because for months now I haven't been able to move past the edge. I haven't been able to reach the center where he would be waiting.

I look back at my space station. There is no food or water there. Just air and an empty steel room that once sealed off my equally empty past. Beyond that station is a star – dimmed greatly by now – that used to be a lush planet full of life, and it housed the woman I loved. Behind me stands everything I've come to regret. Ahead of me stands an impenetrable wall sealing off something I'm not even sure is still there. I look at my tank. It's near empty now. I can feel the limited oxygen reaching me. The weight of the suit bears down on me. I close my eyes for a moment – allowing all feelings of regret, and guilt and heart break to wash over me, before finally looking ahead.

With one foot moved forward, I march ahead towards an unforgiving storm.


End file.
